Art is dead, long live merch

It’s good to be home. Got back from Paris a couple of days ago and just about back on California time. It’s nice to be home where dinner is easy, there’s no traffic noise at night, and the bed smells like me.

60 postcards, 2 t-shirts, 0 prints. That’s the sales tally.

The postcard results are impressive and the markup on postcards is phenomenal. Good thing I have so many. But one can’t live on postcards alone. The sales did buy a bottle of wine for the table each evening. I guess that’s a success.

So why, no prints. Maybe French people don’t have walls. Or at least no flat walls. Maybe they all live in ultra-modern apartments with curving walls and soaring ceilings and no place to hang a print. Like the circular airport terminal. Or maybe they’re advanced and do everything, including art appreciation, electronically.

They certainly enjoy taking the art home. There was a continuous stream of people taking photos of the photos. Every couple of minutes someone was taking a picture. Hundreds of people took home a photo of a photo.

Here’s a selection of the images. I like it when you can see the photos on the screens of their phones.

There were a couple of fun incidents: A ten-year old boy whose parents shielded him from seeing my wall as they walked by, sneaked back for a look when they weren’t paying attention. And then there was the 50ish woman pushing an 80ish woman in a wheelchair, who exclaimed, “Look Mom, a butt!” as they approached. Then they wheeled over for a close up look.

They said that in French by the way. I’m so proud that I understood. That’s one thing that was a success on this trip, my knowledge of French words for body parts has improved enormously.